FOOTBALL

If It’s Friday, It’s Time For A USC Notes Column

Former USC star Joey Browner is battling “serious health issues” according to his former Minnesota Vikings teammate, Tommy Kramer.

Kramer and other Vikings are hosting a fundraiser for Browner. Here is information if you want to purchase an autographed item.

  • The USC women’s volleyball team is ranked No. 21 in the AVCA preseason poll. There are six Big Ten teams ranked ahead of the Trojans, including No. 1-ranked Nebraska and No. 2 Penn State.
  • USC will play at Grand Canyon on Oct. 25 in what is being called an exhibition game. Guess Eric Musselman didn’t want to risk an early road loss.
  • And now for some history:
  • It’s nice to see long-time USC athletic director Willis O. Hunter got honored by legendary Trojan illustrator Art Brewster in 1956. Hunter was USC athletic director from 1925-57.

Maybe Hunter’s most audacious move occurred in 1950, when he tried to hire Bear Bryant as USC football coach.

“I had just signed a new contract at Kentucky,” Bryant said.

Kentucky, you say? Bryant had just gone 11-1 and defeated No. 1-ranked Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl. The final polls in those days came out before the bowl games but some still recognized Kentucky as national champions.

USC eventually hired former assistant Jess Hill instead, who was the Trojans’ track coach at the time.

“When they promoted Hill, the athletic board had not considered him,” a USC athletic dept. employee at the time who has since died told me. “Someone finally said, `How about (USC track coach) Jess Hill?’ Another said: `Why I never thought of him.’ ”

Bryant went to Texas A&M in 1954, replacing former USC player Ray George, who was also a Trojans’ assistant coach from 1946-50, 1958-64 and 1972-74. George later became an assistant athletic director at USC.

  • In 1969, Bryant was offered the Miami Dolphins job. He wanted to take it but Alabama told him to get someone “as good as you” to replace him.

Bryant offered the job to John McKay the next day at the Senior Bowl. McKay said he wasn’t interested, which caused Bryant to change his mind and remain at Alabama.

  • Hunter tried to build the 10,000-seat Howard Jones Fieldhouse on campus in 1947 but USC was unable to raise the $1 million required for the project. Too bad Carol Folt wasn’t around to simply approve it without the money.
  • Amazingly, the USC athletic dept. has given out an academic award to students for the past five years called the Willis O’Hunter Award, not the Willis O. Hunter Award. Where is Tim Tessalone when he actually could be useful?

USC-NOTRE DAME PICTURE OF THE WEEK

  • I originally decided to run this photo because I thought it was a great picture and I liked the USC helmets. But then I found story after story to be told about it.

First, USC defeated Notre Dame, 28-20, in Jess Hill’s final game as the Trojans’ coach on Dec. 1, 1956.

Fullback C. R. Roberts follows the blocking of Don Hoffman (34), Laird Willott (68) and Bob Voiles (83) against the Irish. Roberts is best remembered for a game earlier in the season when USC went to face Texas and was told its African-American players could not stay at its Austin hotel.

Hill refused to stay there and found another hotel for the entire team. Roberts gained 251 yards in 12 carries with 3 TDs in USC’s 44-20 victory over an all-white Texas team. Roberts scored on runs of 73, 50 and 74 yards.

Hill was Mr. USC. He was a running back on USC’s national championship team in 1928, played pro baseball, became USC’s football coach from 1951-56 and athletic director from 1957-72, when USC won 29 national titles.

USC wore jersey numbers on its helmets, one of only three seasons in school history when this happened (1956, 1957, 1963 Rose Bowl).

And in an accidental footnote, I wondered who No. 19 was in this photo. It turned out to be James Conroy, who was Canadian. This raises the question of whether he was the first Canadian player in USC history? Conroy returned to Canada after college and played for the Ottawa Rough Riders from 1960-67 and Winnipeg Blue Bombers in 1968. He was an all-star three times.

Other notes: Willott was a senator-at-large in the USC student senate in 1956-57. Voiles won the javelin at the 1957 USA track and field championships and still has one of USC’s top 10 all-time marks with the old implements.

  • Safety Joey Browner (47) was named USC’s most valuable player in 1982 and also was an All-Pac-10 selection that season. He finished his career with nine interceptions and then enjoyed a successful pro career with the Minnesota Vikings, where he was a six-time Pro Bowl selection. He was a member of the NFL’s 1980’s All-Decade team and also named one of the 50 greatest Minnesota Vikings.

VIDEO OF THE WEEK

You can’t beat Peter O’Toole telling a story.

30 thoughts on “If It’s Friday, It’s Time For A USC Notes Column”

  2. I love all this Trojan history. My dad played from 1927-30 and I was there on the teams of Don Clark in 1959 and John McKay until 1962. You stimulate some great memories.

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      3. Unfortunately I got injured before the Notre Dame game. Coach McKay was kind enough to allow me to keep my scholarship until the next year. I was a practice player except when I was a starter on the 59 freshman team as a small puling guard and middle guard on defense. We played both ways in those days. Coach Goux recruited me and tried to make me a stud for my whole time. My dad played center on Coach Howard Jones’ championship teams. I coached football at El Rancho and San Clemente for 38 years.

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      4. Thanks Dave. El Rancho had some good teams in the late sixties and early seventies. My uncle and John Robinson played tight end for McKay when he coached at Oregon. Neither one played much. McKay liked to run the ball and my uncle and Robinson were on the smaller side and like to catch it. Blocking not so much.

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  3. Great Friday column. Hearing about the old-school administrators just makes me depressed at USC’s recent experience. Interim president Beong-Soo Kim seems to be a principled and good man, perhaps he will become permanent.

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  4. Can’t imagine Bear Bryant coaching the Miami Dolphins. Don’t think his discipline would work with NFL guys like Jim Kick and Larry Csonka. They eventually settled on Don Shula, had a perfect season, and won a few Super Bowls.

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    1. KAM: The only thing that stopped the Dolphins was the WFL.

      DON: They could have racked up multiple Super Bowls with  Csonka, Warfield and Kiick,.

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  5. KAM: Pretty gutsy of SC’s Coach Jess Hill in 1950s Texas where at that time they practiced America’s version of apartheid

    DON: C. R. Roberts was probably the only man of color on that Trojan team; it’s hard to believe we once acted that way

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  7. KAM: Non Governmental Organization run by Democrat Governor Mimbo’s bimbo second wife gets millions in taxpayer dollars which is then sent to her ‘for profit’ organization – giving the Newsom family a benefit of ~$1.5 million from nonprofit salary + ~$1.7 million from film sales/licenses.

    DON: The nonprofit, heavily funded by the state, pays Jennifer Newsom both directly and indirectly, while her for-profit business profits from selling films to the nonprofit in the first place.

    Liked by 1 person

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  8. DON: Great Trojan news– some newspaper columnist thinks that SC with its newly stout defense and improved quarterback play “can beat anybody”

    He continues, the Trojans “moved the ball well” against last year’s Playoff entrants Penn St and ND, and Wiley knows quarterbacks. They will move the ball well again this year

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  9. DON: Let’s play out that exchange with Sellers and Letterman: Back in the day “Drinking was something you’d do when you weren’t doing something else”

    KAM: Even if you wee doing something else

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. KAM: You mean O ‘T o o l e and Letterman?

      DON: Peter Sellers was never ever on Letterman’s show… he died in 1980 and Letterman’s first show on NBC began in 1982.

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  12. KAM: Since history only begins at birth, SC in the 1950s is far away for me.

    DON: The 1950s were not that great for Trojan football except one year, so it’s best to start with McKay and the National Championship year of 1962

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  14. The Willis Hunter program has the 1920 USC schedule. We were able to beat Cal Tech, Occidental and the Pomona Colleges that year. A hundred years later and Riley wants to play the same schedule.

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